Abstract:
National security concerns are closely intertwined with the political transformation’s vector in the post-Soviet space. In the case of some former Soviet republics, security concerns play such a significant role in their state-building efforts that they can speed up the democratization process. It is argued that the approach to its own security that Russia implements has a fundamental twofold impact on the political developments in the countries in the area. First, Russian aggressive politics in the area partly explains why some of the post-Soviet countries wish to join Western institutions and thus follow the democratization path. Second, Russia stubbornly undermines their pro-western and pro-democratic vector of development. As a result, irrespective of some positive tendencies emerging recently, the prospect of democratization in the post-Soviet space remains uncertain.